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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28194993">The Fate of the Galaxy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspecialkindofhuman/pseuds/aspecialkindofhuman'>aspecialkindofhuman</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bad Anakin, Darth Vader is not a good dad but he's trying, Gen, Luke and Vader one-shot, Luke is tired and hurt and not about this scary dark man, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka make a passing appearance, luke is five, murder is bad Anakin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:41:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,211</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28194993</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspecialkindofhuman/pseuds/aspecialkindofhuman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke is four (almost five) when he is kidnapped by a band of Tusken Raiders. They break his arm when he won’t stop crying and his fear rips a hole in the shields Obi-Wan laid over him at his birth and ripples out across the galaxy. Systems and worlds and planets away, the man who was once Anakin Skywalker feels its echo and drives his blood-red lightsaber into the heart of his former Sith Master. And so begins and ends a coup with galactic implications, one that leads the Emperor Vader, in his newly regrown body, to the one place he thought he’d never return.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Luke Skywalker &amp; Darth Vader, Padme Amidala/Anakin Skywalker - past</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>210</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Fate of the Galaxy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is my first published fanfic in four/five years so be gentle with me pls lol.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Luke is four (almost five) when he is kidnapped by a band of Tusken Raiders. They break his arm when he won’t stop crying and his fear rips a hole in the shields Obi-Wan laid over him at his birth and ripples out across the galaxy.</p>
<p>Systems and worlds and planets away, the man who was once Anakin Skywalker feels its echo and drives his blood-red lightsaber into the heart of his former Sith Master. And so begins and ends a coup with galactic implications, one that leads the Emperor Vader, in his newly regrown body, to the one place he thought he’d never return.</p>
<p>Luke is five (just barely) when the high whine of a TIE fighter wakes him from a restless sleep. Rubbing grit out of his eye, he pokes his head out of his room and watches his aunt and uncle rush by, before Aunt Beru turns back and ushers him inside his room.</p>
<p>“Stay inside,” she says, almost whispering. “And stay quiet, Luke. Can you do that for me?”</p>
<p>Luke pouts and opens his mouth to argue, but Aunt Beru runs shaky fingers through his hair in a silent plea. </p>
<p>Luke’s aunt and uncle have been acting really weird since Ben rescued him from the Raiders, jumping at the slightest noise and patrolling the desert around the homestead with old blasters at their sides. His father even tried to hire a guard droid from a group of Jawas that passed by, but he didn’t have the credits to pay for it.</p>
<p>Old Ben has been acting really weird too, visiting them periodically and checking on Luke’s slowly healing injuries. He’s also started talking to him about some weird stuff called the Force, trying to show him how to move things with his mind and speak to Ben without ever actually opening his mouth. Uncle Owen got really mad when he found out, but a look from Aunt Beru silenced him, and he took to staring hard at Luke’s broken arm, still secured in a sling across his chest, whenever old Ben came by.</p>
<p>Luke thinks about all of this when his aunt tells him to stay quiet and squashes down his curiosity to see a TIE fighter up close. He nods and Aunt Beru sighs, pressing a kiss to the side of his head before she leaves. Luke watches her until the door slides shut behind her and then grabs his stuffed Bantha, pulling it close to his chest and sitting in the center of his bed to wait.</p>
<p>He makes it all of two minutes before he’s tiptoeing to the door and sliding it open, stepping lightly across the sand of the courtyard and up to the side entrance dome. The door opens and Luke slides around the side of the dome, turning back to the main entrance and gasping quietly.</p>
<p>A large, dark TIE fighter sits on the sand with a group of white armored soldiers spread out from its wings and standing at alert on both sides. Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen stand in front of it, hands well away from their blasters, while the men in white armor hold theirs loosely at their sides. Luke recognizes the men as Stormtroopers, Imperial army fighters, and watches with something between awe and fear as they shift in the sand, their helmeted faces looking back and forth between his aunt and uncle and the open landing doors of the fighter.</p>
<p>Luke holds his Bantha tighter to him with the arm not tied up in its sling as a dark-robed figure descends from the open landing doors onto the orange sand. The Stormtroopers around him straighten, hands tightening around their blasters, as the robed figure crosses from the fighter to where Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen stand, his cloak absorbing the darkness of Tatooine’s rising suns as they peek over the far horizon, bathing everything in brilliant red and orange light.</p>
<p>Luke’s too far away to hear what the robed man says to his guardians, but he must say something they don’t like, because Aunt Beru backs away with a horrified look and Uncle Owen reaches down for the blaster hanging at his hip. Luke whines, low in his throat, as the Stormtroopers raise their blasters in turn, but the robed man merely holds up a hand and Uncle Owen’s weapon flies into it. He closes his fist around the laser pistol and its crumples, worn durasteel and plastisteel folding easily.</p>
<p>He drops the ruined hunk of blaster to the ground and reaches up, tossing back his hood to reveal a strangely familiar face. Shaggy dark blonde hair hangs down nearly to his shoulders and his eyes are the same sky-blue shade Luke sees in the mirror every morning. Something flutters in Luke’s tummy as he looks at him, a man he has never seen before yet somehow <em>knows</em> with everything in him, and he moves forward without thinking.</p>
<p>He stops when the man draws something from his belt and red light erupts from his hand, brighter even than the red of the twin suns inching over the horizon. The blue of his eyes recedes, replaced by a burning yellow, a fiery orange. The fluttering in Luke’s tummy intensifies, twisting from nervous excitement to dread, to fear, to horror, as the man swings the light forward and buries it in Uncle Owen’s chest.</p>
<p>Luke screams without meaning to, dropping his stuffed Bantha and rushing forward as Uncle Owen falls and the Stormtroopers whip their blasters around in his direction. The man turns to look at Luke, but he can’t see his expression, too focused on the red light at his side and the unmoving form of his Uncle, lying face-down in the sand. Aunt Beru turns too and she screams, stretching her arm, palm out, in his direction.  </p>
<p>“Run, Luke!” She screams, and the man turns back to her, red light burning once again. “Luke!” She says as he swings the light down in her direction. “Ru-!”</p>
<p>Luke is five and running for his life for the second time in three weeks, sprinting through the sand with his Aunt and Uncle and the only life he’s known behind him and nothing but the Jundland Wastes and the deserts of Tatooine in front of him. He can hear shouting from behind him, loud, thundering footsteps and the clink and scratch of armor rubbing together. But he ignores it all, ducking around a storage dome on the outskirts of the Lars’ farmstead and toward the stretch of canyon that descends from the sand on the edge of Uncle Owen’s property. It’s no Beggars’ Canyon with its craggy walls and sharp twists and turns, but it’s enough of a change from the flat, exposed sand that it might give Luke the chance he needs to hide from the Stormtroopers and run back to Anchorhead for help.</p>
<p>Help from who, he doesn’t really know. The only person he can think might help him is Ben, but Ben went off-world to go on a Very Important Mission recently and Luke has no idea when (if) he might be back. </p>
<p>Scrabbling down the incline into the small canyon path off the Lars farmstead, Luke stumbles and catches himself on his broken arm. The pain rips a cry from between his clenched teeth and a rock the size of his head cracks in two places on the ground beside his foot. Tears blur his vision as he picks himself up and keeps running, hearing the pounding echoes of the Stormtrooper’s footsteps as they tear down the canyon path behind him.</p>
<p>He’s just entered the section where the path starts to split in multiple directions when a hand closes on his uninjured arm. The grip pulls him up short and he yelps as the momentum tugs on his injured arm.</p>
<p>He is spun around to face a slightly out-of-breath Stormtrooper, the dome of his helmet gleaming like a desert bone bleached by Tatooine’s twin suns. “I got him!” the Stormtrooper says, voice tinny and distorted through his helmet. He turns back to the group catching him to on the canyon path, dragging Luke with him and shaking him lightly. “I got him!”</p>
<p>Luke smashes his foot into the man’s knee where the white armor buckles around a slightly less-padded knee joint, reaching into humming energy of the Force that swirls ever-present around him. He thinks of Ben’s teachings and drags one half of the rock he cracked earlier up off the ground and into the side of the Stormtrooper’s head.</p>
<p>The shock of the hit more than the actual impact caused the solider to loosen his grip, but it is the other half of the rock smashing into the underside of his chin that finally makes him let go of Luke. Sprinting away, Luke extends a hand and sends spiderweb cracks up the side of the canyon wall, hoping to weaken it and send it crashing down onto the Stormtroopers like he’d seen the hero do in an old holovid he watched once. All he really does is send a burst of dust and sand flying their way, enough to slow them down momentarily, but definitely not to stop them.</p>
<p>Luke keeps running and a few twists and turns of the canyon path later and he’s found a small crevice that he knows (from past experience, running away from the farm to hide from his chores) opens up to a small cave. He just manages to wedge himself through the crack and into the cave beyond when the thundering footsteps of the Stormtroopers run past and Luke doesn’t move and holds his breath until the last of them have gone.</p>
<p>When the dust and the sand has settled in their wake, Luke breaths out a ragged sob, covering his mouth with his uninjured hand to try and muffle his cry-breathing in case any of the soldiers double back to look for him. Tears burn in his eyes, but he tries to keep them from falling; water is precious on Tatooine, even salty tear-water.</p>
<p>He doesn’t know how much time has passed – although it feels as if it’s been <em>ages</em> – but he’s just started to think it might be safe enough to risk going back out into the open when he feels it: a tickling at the back of his mind, like a word he’s forgotten sitting at the tip of his tongue, or a memory he can’t quite remember slowly rising to the surface of his thoughts. It’s not an unpleasant sensation, but not a pleasant one either, kind of like an itch he can’t scratch, or a need he hasn’t fully realized yet. It reminds him of the couple of times Ben tried to communicate to him with the Force and he latches onto it greedily, so desperate for someone to come save him that he doesn’t stop to think about what he’s doing.</p>
<p><em>Ben!</em> he shouts into the void of the Force, a void that has become less and less frightening the more he pulls on it as Ben taught him to but is still rather unknown to him. <em>Ben, I’m here!</em></p>
<p><em>Luke . . . </em>The voice is a distant echo, growing closer, tickling the back of his mind like a physical presence. <em>Luke</em>.</p>
<p><em>Ben, please!</em> Even his mind-Force-voice sounds like its crying and Luke tries desperately to rein it in, wishing for his stuffed Bantha, wishing for his aunt to come and hold him, wishing for Old Ben to pluck him out of the crack in the stone and run a calloused hand over the top of his head. <em>There’s a dark man chasing me.</em> He sniffs, burying his face into the sandy stone. <em>He killed my aunt and uncle. </em></p>
<p><em>It’ll be alright, Luke</em>. The voice doesn’t sound right, doesn’t sound like Old Ben’s did the times they tried speaking to each other through the Force. <em>I’m here now. It’ll be alright.</em></p>
<p>A shadow crosses in front of the bolt-hole Luke is hiding in and doubles back, blocking out the light and reaching out to Luke with shadowy hands.</p>
<p><em>Here, Luke. Come here.</em> A rough, gravelly voice speaks in time with the voice in his head and although it still doesn’t sound quite right, Ben is the only one Luke knows who can speak to him through the Force. Shivering in a mix of fear and relief and adrenaline-drop exhaustion, Luke slowly scoots forward, trying not to let his injured arm drag against the craggy rock wall. It catches in a few places, but he bravely muffles his cries, sliding forward into the dark hands reaching for him.</p>
<p>“Ben,” he cries as he wriggles free of the crack and drops into the hold of a strong pair of arms. “Ben, what are we going to do! He killed my aunt and uncle! He –”</p>
<p>Luke looks up and into the face of the dark man from earlier, taking in his shaggy hair, blue eyes, tan skin with a muted kind of horror.</p>
<p>“Luke,” the dark man breathes, passing a gloved hand over Luke’s head, brushing dirt and sand from his wispy blonde hair. His grip is far too kind, far too gentle for someone who killed two people mere moments ago and Luke finds part of him relaxing into them even as he starts screaming and struggling to get away.</p>
<p>“LET GO!” He yells, bringing his legs up to try and kick the man in the stomach. “LET GO OF ME!”</p>
<p>His kicks are easily brushed away and the arms that were so gentle around him tighten carefully, holding him, restraining him.</p>
<p>“Luke . . .” the man tries again, but Luke is tired and angry and hurting and upset and he twists, reaching into the Force-void with everything he has and tossing it up at the man’s strangely familiar face.</p>
<p>The strength of his Push obviously surprises the dark man and his grip around Luke falters for a moment. Luke manages to get one foot down on the dusty Tatooine ground, trying to pull his arm free of the man’s grip while desperately reaching into the Force for more of his newfound power. He doesn’t get any further than that, however, as the man tightens his hold, twisting his arms to scoop Luke up and tuck him tight against his chest. A second hold of weight and directionless energy settles over Luke’s shoulders, keeping him pinned that much more securely in the older man’s grip.  </p>
<p>Shocked by the cold, dark feel of that blanket of Force energy, Luke doesn’t protest as the man shifts Luke in his arms to free up one hand, using that hand to tilt Luke’s face up in his direction. For a moment, he and the dark man just stare at one another. The canyon is quiet, no wind whistling through the craggy walls to disturb the sand gathering in dusty piles, no angry buzzing of some far-off predator or distant screams of its terrified prey. For a moment, it is as if all the galaxy is quiet: bearing silent witness to a father-son reunion with galactic ramifications.</p>
<p>Somewhere far, far away, Obi-Wan Kenobi feels a faint tugging on the elaborate shields he’s layered over his mind and tenses up, ignoring the concerned looks his old friend Bail keeps sending his way. Leia Organa looks up from her studies and wrinkles her nose, feeling for all the world as if she’s forgotten to do something important. Ahsoka Tano feels a beat of panic she cannot explain and resolves to call Obi-Wan and Bail later to go over the movements of their fledgling Rebellion. Meanwhile, father and son stare at each other in charged silence, broken only by the soft puffs of their shared breath.</p>
<p>The moment is broken when Luke remembers the bodies of his aunt and uncle, slain by the dark man’s red light and lying discarded and broken on the sand. He draws in a breath to scream and squirm and force the dark man to let go of him, but the man, sensing his intentions, places his palm on his forehead and presses down gently.</p>
<p><em>Sleep</em>. The man’s Force-rough voice passes into him with undeniable strength and Luke falls asleep on an inhale, slumping forward into his father’s arms.</p>
<p>The man that was once Anakin Skywalker holds his young son in his arms and gives himself a moment to feel everything: the pain his son had projected across the galaxy when the Raiders broke his arm, the grief of his wife and the pain of her passing that he’d repressed and suppressed for so long, the constantly boiling and bubbling anger in his gut that had flared and broke to overflowing the moment he’d felt his son’s Force cry.</p>
<p>If he remembered how to regret, he would have felt it for the people he’d killed, the people who’d taken in and raised Luke when he was unable to. He hadn’t meant to kill them – hadn’t come to Tatooine to do anything but pick up his son and leave – but watching them quake before him, watching them try and shield and defend their adopted (<em>stolen</em>) son had touched on that part of him that was always, always angry. He’d cut them down before he’d even realized he’d done it, and though he knew it probably wasn’t the best way to introduce himself to his newly recovered son, it was done and he’d long since unlearned emotional regret.</p>
<p>The man that was once Anakin Skywalker brushes a flyaway strand of wispy blonde hair away from his sleeping son’s face and Luke, almost on instinct, turns into the palm gently cupping his face. Anakin Skywalker – no, <em>no</em>, Darth Vader, still and always <em>Darth Vader</em> – presses his forehead into the side of his son’s slack face and vowed to himself, to his son, to the galaxy as silent witness, to protect this shining light, the last of the radiant Padmé Amidala, even if it meant the destruction of everything else around him.</p>
<p>Luke, as if sensing his father’s great love, wrapped in layer after layer of dark and cruel intentions, shifts in his arms as if testing his father’s hold. It doesn’t give, and Darth Vader pulls away at last, walking back through the canyon to his ship. He’d give his son anything, everything, the whole galaxy, the whole <em>universe</em>, eventually. But for now, he’d settle with giving him a bath and a bed and the royal treatment on an A-class starship of the Empire he would one day rule.</p>
<p>Luke is five (Leia too!) when his father whisks him away from all that he’s ever known on the backwater planet of Tatooine. Neither father nor son know yet how much this changes the fate of the galaxy, shifting it ever-so-slightly in a direction that hints of peace and Light and balance of the Force, but they will soon find out, as everything that Emperor Vader does paves a way further and further from what Emperor Palpatine had planned. And if Luke forgoes the Emperor route all together and finds a way to broker peace with the burgeoning Rebellion, then that’s his decision, and his long-suffering father has no choice but to concede and let his son shape the galaxy as he sees fit.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I might continue this, jumping forward a couple times to do one-shots when Luke's older, or I may not. idk yet. I've been working on a lot of fanfic behind the scenes but never felt confident enough to finish or publish any of them so I really wanted to just get this out there to see if it would break my writer's block/confidence rut. hope you like it!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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